She knew she hit it, but we did not find it until early the next morning.

Looks like ground shrinkage! But did not affect the rack.

Looks like you found it many years later, I’m surprised there’s anything left.

?

Needless to say, y'all have plenty of coyotes and or hogs. Wide one, glad you at least found it.

Yep first thing I thought of was Yotes beat them to it. Nice wide rack did you measure it?

That's one odd picture, but reinforces why I hate shooting deer at dusk.

How Wide was it?

I concur with Creek here. That buck didn't go far and was easily retrieved in the light. There was very lil' blood until we stumbled on the find which looked like a murder scene.

Width? Don't recall exactly - 23 or so.

its rare we dont recover a deer same day but its happened. iirc once this happened and once it didnt. i see and hear about bowhunters on hunting shows especially leave them overnight regularly. yall got any feel for the frequency this would occur??

Man, that sucks. Nice deer.

At least the 'yotes to caped it for you?

Y'all never heard of a flashlight?

Flashlight? We don't care about the sanctity of the mission preferring to glorify the antlers. A somewhat confused hunter and a lack of obvious hit signs led us to do nothing and make a "check" in the AM. We just went in fixed cocktails, set a fire, put our feet up and waited for the cooks to prepare our dinner while we ate Julios & salsa and watched the big screen.

I've seen this happen before. It sucks to have that happen to a deer, amazing how efficient some scavenging animals can be.

Wide buck! Glad it was recovered. I have observed that predators often pattern feeding areas as does their prey and consequently this is sometimes the result should an animal be left overnight.

depends a lot on location. on my ranch, we dont have yotes in any real number... so my chances of finding one the next day, that hadn't been eat'n would be 90%...... but this is texas and most likely it would be rotten by the next day. (Bracketteville/ Rocksprings area)

On a place I hunt in Zapata Co. finding an uneaten deer left over night would about 30% but again its 90% on not being edible...

if you are worried about the cape you can get those pretty easy...

On a place I hunted in Webb county, a hunter witnessed coyotes taking chunks of the hindquarters of a buck that he shot. He was waiting a little while for dark to get out of the blind. The next morning I was chastised by another hunter for messing up his hunt. My son shot a buck, we got out of the blind and got in truck, went down the hill to retrieve the dead buck. The other hunter said we should have waited til 9 am. I reminded him of what had just happened the evening before. And the coyotes were already howling as soon as my sons buck hit the ground.

Sad to see. Trailing at night is tuff especially if you weren't the shooter and don't have a good mark on where the deer was when shot.

No way we would find a deer in edible condition over night at our place in south texas. We have had deer that sat on the ground for about an hour have things pick at the eyes and rear while we go get the truck.